posted at 3:41 pm on November 25, 2013 by Allahpundit

Turns out, after three years and a half years of development plus two months of frantic triage to Healthcare.gov, Democrats are finally ready to hold the White House accountable for its giant O-Care fark-up. A little.

“The president and his team have repeatedly assured us that the system will be working by Dec. 1. That’s when I start looking at what we have to do in our oversight function to hold the administration accountable for making it work.” Rep. Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat who is running for an open Senate seat said Thursday, adding that he’s contemplating whether to ask the president to fire members of his staff. “I’m thinking about those options. But my biggest concern is fixing the system and making it work.”…

[A] big-city lawmaker predicted oversight hearings are “going to be ugly” come next month. “The more we find out about this implementation of the ACA, the worse it looks. The Congress did our job. We passed the ACA. It’s up to the administration to implement the law.”…

“At this point, I don’t think there is anyone that would express any confidence in the administration’s ability to right the ship,” said [a House Democratic] source, adding that members seem to be “bracing for another tidal wave when Dec. 1 comes and goes and we are still dealing with a dysfunctional website, or ‘broken computer’ as the old-timers have been calling it.”…

One Democratic House member, asked by text message whether he was worried that there didn’t seem to be a Plan B at the White House, wrote back, “Yes!!!”

What does it mean for Democrats to turn on O, apart from some angry grandstanding at the next round of congressional hearings on ObamaCare? Well, there may or may not be floor votes to extend the enrollment period or delay the mandate, depending upon how loyal Reid is feeling to Obama these days. Another piece at Politico notes a schism between congressional Democratic leaders who feel they need to protect O on the one hand and Democratic strategists and backbenchers who need to protect the party (read: themselves) next November on the other. Al Franken’s job approval stands at 51/42 and he’s running next year in a famously blue state, and even he’s erring on the side of delay. No one is safe, at least for now.

If Reid sides with rank and file and those floor votes on delay happen, that’ll raise a new dilemma for the White House. Does O sign the bill(s), knowing that giving people more time to enroll next year could make the adverse selection problem for insurers worse, or does he veto it/them on grounds that it’s too early to know if an enrollment extension is necessary and that we should avoid one if possible? As with Iran sanctions, I don’t know if a veto-proof majority is out of the question. In fact, precisely because a veto override would be a dramatic way to distance congressional Dems from Obama, some Democratic fencesitters may end up tilting in favor of the bills. Even if it’s bad policy for O-Care fans, it’s good optics for the panicky Democrats who passed it.

Speaking of the website and Democratic schadenfreude, carve out three minutes for this NYT piece from Saturday about the special blend of arrogance and incompetence that led HHS to think it could manage a project as sophisticated as the Healthcare.gov build. Here’s what House Democrats will be ostentatiously pounding the table over at the next hearings:

CGI and other contractors complained of endlessly shifting requirements and a government decision-making process so cumbersome that it took weeks to resolve elementary questions, such as determining whether users should be required to provide Social Security numbers. Some CGI software engineers ultimately walked out, saying it was impossible to produce good work under such conditions…

Another sore point was the Medicare agency’s decision to use database software, from a company called MarkLogic, that managed the data differently from systems by companies like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. CGI officials argued that it would slow work because it was too unfamiliar. Government officials disagreed, and its configuration remains a serious problem…

[HHS technology officer Henry] Chao had to consult with senior department officials and the White House, and was unable to make many decisions on his own. “Nothing was decided without a conversation there,” said one agency official involved in the project, referring to the constant White House demands for oversight. On behalf of Mr. Chao, the Medicare agency declined to comment…

A pattern of ever-shifting requirements persisted throughout the project, including the administration’s decision late last year to try to redesign the site’s appearance and content to make it more informative to consumers, according to many specialists involved. The administration also decided to reconfigure it as a national site, instead of one where each state had its own front page, after many states decided not to open their own exchanges.

Things were so far behind in late summer, per the Times, that HHS had no choice but to drop nearly 30 features that had wanted for the site — including a system to transmit subsidies for individual consumers’ policies to insurers. A predecessor at HHS warned Chao this summer that you can’t build a system like this overnight, to which Chao allegedly replied, “I know. But I cannot talk them out of it.” Anyone out there still think President Bambi was a blissfully ignorant little fawn about all this?

Repairs are being made, though. Even inveterate website critic Bob Laszewski reports that there have been improvements to the crucially important back end of the site, which routes information on applicants between insurers and the federal data hub. Roughly five percent of the information that’s being received by the industry, though, is still garbled or incomplete. If that rate isn’t reduced, the White House’s target of seven million enrollments by next April would mean … 350,000 botched applications that would need to be corrected. Somehow.

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Is this success measured as according to the WH – where 4 out of 5 are successful?

What is the measurement of success? A website that only crashes 10 or 20% of the time? Or a marketplace exchange that can actually and accurately address subsidies and premium payment processing – so a ‘done deal’ is not just when someone drops a policy in their shopping cart, but actually pays for their coverages?

What about the security measures that remain massively deficient as detailed last week in Congressional testimony?

My fear is that the bar of ‘success’ is being set so low by the WH / Administration and the sycophants in the lapdog media when measured against the launch of the clusterfark, that pretty much anything is going to be spun off as a ‘success’ to deflect from the remaining massive problems (and lies) in the EpicClusterFark.

One question – did the Administration, in setting their target for 7 million enrollees by the end of March 2014 include the 5.5 million who’ve lost their coverage – or was that 7 million of the uninsured before Obamacare took effect and where they really need to achieve 12.5 million in order to keep things ‘on target’?

Obama knew it wouldn’t work. He didn’t need a plan B because he was convinced we would be so angry with the insurance companies over cancellations and rate hikes that the broken website wouldn’t matter. He thought we would all be marching the mall demanding single payer by now.

that is pretty much the definition of socialism/leftism aka the progressive mind.

but, sadly, i would hold the schadenfreude for a while. As shown by Juan Williams, leftists are eager to fight, fight with smears, ad homs, sophistry, all the weapons that they have honed over the decades.

barry and the professional left are street fighters….like nancy pelosi, they stand at the gates and are willing to do anything…helicopter in…to burn down the mansion..or something

The use of the MarkLogic database has got to be one of the costliest errors ever made in a government contract. They could have used one of several open source databases and save the taxpayers millions of dollars in programming costs. Check out this link on Slashdot Bad database choice causes project chaos

Roughly five percent of the information that’s being received by the industry, though, is still garbled or incomplete. If that rate isn’t reduced, the White House’s target of seven million enrollments by next April would mean … 350,000 botched applications that would need to be corrected. Somehow.

Ed, is it 5 percent of applications that are being garbled or 5 percent of the information on each application?

If it’s the latter, then every application would need to be corrected and that’s a very heavy lift.

Besides, this has nothing to do with a website. People are pissed at the cost and reach of the exchanges. Website working will just mean pissing people off at a greater rate.

crosspatch on November 25, 2013 at 3:58 PM

True, but you have to understand that a lot of the Dems who voted for and support this law are still completely clueless about it. I think just like they deluded themselves into thinking Obamacare meant affordable, accessible health care for everyone, now they believe all the problems will be solved the moment the website is fixed.

Democrats set to turn on Obama if Healthcare.gov isn’t ready next week

This has all the appearances of a political play with the midterm elections coming up.

The Dems recognize Obamacare is a failure, if not also that Obama is, (hopefully the ones in touch with reality realize this), but they want to APPEAR to people to be “in touch” while most of these same won’t vote against Obama/Reid/DNC commands.

They’re PLAYING at “turning on Obama”. I can’t imagine the Democrats, most if not all of them, ever actually doing that, since their voting behaviors indicate the opposite. They’re just trying to fool their constituents, once again.

Democrats set to turn on Obama if Healthcare.gov isn’t ready next week

Repairs are being made, though.

At some point, AP, you should have someone read your posts like they were an “old school” newspaper editor.

Your headline premise is false to fact.

The Democrats are NOT set to turn on Obama because of the host of problems on Healthcare.gov.

The Democrats are set to turn on Obama because of the millions of people FURIOUS over the “If you like your …” lies Obama told and for which the rank and file Democrats are going to answer.

Hint: Politico is the world’s worst source of material. The Allies did not use Goebbels to source their coverage.

The first sentence of your last paragraph is misleading. The repairs being made have been widely savaged by objective third parties. Regardless of those known facts, you take an estimate by a non-technical source and extrapolate it into a remarkably unlikely BEST case scenario.

On what basis, either yours or Mr. Laszewski’s lack of skill sets, do you decide to undercut the entire thrust of the rest of your post by this act of self-sabotage?

I’ve never believed FOR A MINUTE that that dysfunction is not intentional. If they can hack and attack and maraude any citizen and organization and it’s members online, they can certainly create a website that’s at least functional.

I think the dysfunction is part of the Left’s objective — it provides foil to place the concerns on about Obamacare itself, which is the actual dysfunction and greatest problem.

The problem is the legislation, not the website.

Note the helpful Leftmedia all pushing the line, “look at how many people Obamacare has already helped with affordable plans” nonsense.

While they omit mentioning all the millions who have lost insurance because of Obamacare.

My prediction: Obama will announce some small part of the system that is now working and declare victory even though the rest of the dysfunction is still there. Democrats and the press will mostly buy it.

Obama knew it wouldn’t work. He didn’t need a plan B because he was convinced we would be so angry with the insurance companies over cancellations and rate hikes that the broken website wouldn’t matter. He thought we would all be marching the mall demanding single payer by now.

tdarrington on November 25, 2013 at 3:54 PM

But that was supposed to be for the 2015-16 election cycle. It was supposed to be a slow-motion ObamaCare train wreck in 2013-14, with people getting angry at the insurers over their new rates and rate hikes at the end of next year, and then the heroic Democrats would step in with the single-payer option and make that part of the 2016 presidential campaign.

The fact the website’s performed like the Titanic on its maiden voyage was not part of the strategerie by Team Obama. Crashing and burning as fast as it did, it put all the focus on government incompetence and not on the higher insurance premium and deductible costs. Obama and the Dems can try and blame the insurers now, but even the low-info voters would angrily tune them out if they claim the answer now is more government control.

The use of the MarkLogic database has got to be one of the costliest errors ever made in a government contract. They could have used one of several open source databases and save the taxpayers millions of dollars in programming costs. Check out this link on Slashdot Bad database choice causes project chaos

JimK on November 25, 2013 at 3:57 PM

Have you heard, has anyone here heard, of the chaotic and crooked history of the groups selected to create the Obamacare website? It suggests *someone* needed realistic culprits to lambast when the inevitable chaos created by Obamacare was realized.

I’ve never believed FOR A MINUTE that that dysfunction is not intentional. If they can hack and attack and maraude any citizen and organization and it’s members online, they can certainly create a website that’s at least functional.

I think the dysfunction is part of the Left’s objective — it provides foil to place the concerns on about Obamacare itself, which is the actual dysfunction and greatest problem.

The problem is the legislation, not the website.

Note the helpful Leftmedia all pushing the line, “look at how many people Obamacare has already helped with affordable plans” nonsense.

While they omit mentioning all the millions who have lost insurance because of Obamacare.

Another sore point was the Medicare agency’s decision to use database software, from a company called MarkLogic, that managed the data differently from systems by companies like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. CGI officials argued that it would slow work because it was too unfamiliar. Government officials disagreed, and its configuration remains a serious problem…

CGI: Just so you know, we aren’t really familiar with this database software. It’s going to slow us down.

WH: No it won’t.

In fairness, government isn’t unique in that exchange; that’s about 75+% of all web development clients in the history of ever.

If you really believe in your product and you really have confidence in it’s usefulness to future patrons, customers, you do your very best to earnestly select the most responsible talent you can find and afford to do work on your behalf.

Obama/Obamacare selected the most leaky, problematic companies with offensive histories they could and gave them a great deal of money. It doesn’t seem even remotely reasonable what was done as to how the website itself was regarded.

But, I repeat, the website is not the problem, the legislation is the problem. It looks to me like a shaky environment of talent was intentionally selected to produce an intentionally shaky internet presence.

While all these distractions are going on, the voter fraud machine is oiling the gears. Imo, this Obamacare web site is nothing more than an identity gathering mechanism. Illegal voters need identities and SS numbers.
Where did the money go? Who’s hands did it pass thru? 100’s of millions of taxpayer dollars and 3 1/2 years for a website??
This doesn’t seem odd to people?

[A] big-city lawmaker predicted oversight hearings are “going to be ugly” come next month. “The more we find out about this implementation of the ACA, the worse it looks. The Congress did our job. We passed the ACA. It’s up to the administration to implement the law.”…

Yes, and please tell us how much time you spent reviewing the bill and gaining an understanding of what was in the 2,000 pages. You obviously wouldn’t blindly vote on a bill you hadn’t read, would you? By your statement, you agreeded with everything/most everything that was in that bill, thus your consent and yes vote. This is on your hands, Buster, just as much as the administration.

The stupid website is not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Obamacare mega disaster… The website is like a floating small piece of ice… The tip of the iceberg is the over 5 millions people who lost their existing insurance because of Obamacare… The tens of millions of people who will be badly hurt by Obamcare next year are midway in the iceberg… The bottom of the iceberg is when this whole thing falls apart and only the Medicaid expansion is left…

They will create a task force or a committee. They aren’t sure which yet. They need a meeting to decide when to have a conference on deciding if they need a task force or a committee to find out how to respond to events. But then . . . they’ll get to the bottom of this. In two years, we will have their report. Unless it gets delayed.

No you didn’t! !! If you had taken the time to read it before deeming it passed you would have known it was a nasty smelly pile of diarrhea and totally incapable of being polished as you do other turds.

They will create a task force or a committee. They aren’t sure which yet. They need a meeting to decide when to have a conference on deciding if they need a task force or a committee to find out how to respond to events. But then . . . they’ll get to the bottom of this. In two years, we will have their report. Unless it gets delayed.

The Democrats are only fooling themselves if they think that getting the website working will resolve the problems with Obamacare. The botched incompetence inherent in the website is just the tip of the iceberg. The real problems are people losing their existing coverage, rising premiums, rising deductibles, loss if doctors and hospitals, etc. People also won’t be very happy about bring forced to take subsidies from the federal government, especially people who value their independence.

If that rate isn’t reduced, the White House’s new (today, maybe a different number tomorrow) target of seven millionhundred thousand enrollments by next April would mean … 35,000 botched applications that would need to be corrected. Somehow.

FIFY

I think they can fix 35,000 botched enrollments. Just put 5 government employees on each one.

They’re PLAYING at “turning on Obama”. I can’t imagine the Democrats, most if not all of them, ever actually doing that, since their voting behaviors indicate the opposite. They’re just trying to fool their constituents, once again.

Another sore point was the Medicare agency’s decision to use database software, from a company called MarkLogic, that managed the data differently from systems by companies like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. CGI officials argued that it would slow work because it was too unfamiliar. Government officials disagreed, and its configuration remains a serious problem…

Having had experience with MarkLogic, Solr, Oracle and mySQL, the choice of MarkLogic isn’t a bad choice at all, in fact if one is looking to use a true XML database, that would probably be the first choice.

I don’t know what the requirements were from the database needs perspective though so I can’t speak whether using MarkLogic was the proper decision for HealthCare.gov. However, it does sound like the case of a someone (HHS?, CMS? contractor?) saying “yes, we can do it” and at the same time having no real technical bench-strength when it came to build/optimize on top of it. So basically the people they had hired were not familiar with a key (I’d say probably THE key) technology that they wanted to implement.

The skinny is that Obama is going to send everyone to the insurance companies directly. Of course, this means you will have to contact all the companies that have plans in your state to see all the plans available, so it will be just as convenient as a crashing website but you won’t have time to complain about it.

Then, he will announce another extra-legal “fix” by allowing the subsidies to apply to those plans purchased directly from insurers. The law says you only get a subsidy through the exchange, but what’s a few words and phrases? And it’s all from our Beloved Leader, so it will be okay.

A pattern of ever-shifting requirements persisted throughout the project, including the administration’s decision late last year to try to redesign the site’s appearance and content to make it more informative to consumers, according to many specialists involved. The administration also decided to reconfigure it as a national site, instead of one where each state had its own front page, after many states decided not to open their own exchanges.

Politicians designing software and content! That is the most hysterically stupid idea I’ve read about. It’s taken the top spot from jamming a bobbie pin in a wall outlet. Politicians especially dems want things both ways at once, a notion that doesn’t work too well with computers where things are either 1 or 0.

Flashback (for me), 2008…..
Co-worker: “Well we now get free health care.”
I wonder, how does her world turn today? Is she shocked, or still Looking out the window for the unicorn?
Limerick on November 25, 2013 at 10:15 PM

Chasing down Twitter numpties is futile, I know, but there were many smug posts about ’30 million Americans gaining access to care’ etc. at the time.